Textiles are typically manufactured by either fabricating a textile product and subsequently coloring it or by coloring fibers or yarns and subsequently fabricating a colored textile product. Often two manufacturers are required to create a finished textile product, where one manufacturer fabricates the colored or uncolored textile product and a separate manufacturer dyes the fibers, yarns and/or fabricated textile products.
Prepared for dye (PFD) products are textile fabrications that have been sewn into a completed product but have not yet undergone the dyeing process. Typically, PFD apparel products include 100% cotton or cotton rich fabrications and sewing threads. Cotton fabrications are preferred because cotton has been and remains a stable and cost effective product. Because of the popularity of PFD cotton fabrications, manufacturers that dye PFD products have focused on methods for dyeing cotton or cotton rich fabrications. Other methods for dyeing articles having alternative fabrications have not been the focus of manufacturers because cotton readily accepts dyes at atmospheric conditions, thus making cotton fabrications simple to dye.
PFD products are advantageous because they allow a dye house to maintain in inventory a single non-colored product and dye the product in any quantity requested by a customer. Additionally, PFD products are advantageous because they can be dyed and shipped to a customer in a very short time frame. The main disadvantage of PFD products until now is that they can only be dyed solid colors. Because of the market for colorful and stylish garments, textile manufacturers have struggled to find ways for producing multicolored and patterned articles.
One challenge to textile manufacturers is the coloring of articles having multiple materials, such as a mixture of natural and synthetic materials (e.g., cotton and polyester materials). Prior art methods have attempted to dye such articles using a variety of methods. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,356 to Turner discloses a process for dyeing polyester-cellulose union materials in a single bath containing a mixture of disperse and reactive dyes. U.S. Pat. No. 6,068,666 to Amick et al. discloses a process for over-dyeing a blended fiber garment. While these processes address the need to dye articles including multiple materials, they do not address the need to create articles having multiple colors and/or patterns.
Textile manufacturers are faced with the challenge of producing multicolored, patterned articles in order for these articles to appeal to consumers. A common method that is currently used to create an article having more than one color is to cut pieces of previously dyed fabrics and sew the colored fabric pieces together to create the article. The colored fabric can be formed by dyeing yarn before knitting it into fabric or by dyeing the fabric after knitting. This “cut and sew” process requires a consumer of the raw yarn or fabric to purchase a large quantity of the exact same article to make the process cost effective due to the amount of fiber or fabric that must be dyed in a single run. Consequently, a consumer who desires a small number of multicolored articles must either pay an excessive sum for these articles or purchase a larger quantity of articles than he desires.
The “cut & sew” process also requires a manufacturer to maintain a large inventory of dyed fabrics. A large inventory requires a large financial outlay and involves an increased financial risk in the event of a catastrophe that damages or destroys the inventory. Additionally, the “cut and sew” process can lead to large quantities of obsolete inventory if certain colorways do not sell. Furthermore, this process results in a large amount of dyed fabric wastage. The dyed fabric is cut into pieces to produce a textile fabrication and the leftover fabric is discarded. Since this fabric has already been dyed, not only is fabric wasted, but the dye used to color this fabric is also wasted.
Accordingly, what is needed are systems and methods for producing PFD products having multiple colors and/or a variety of patterns.